Remembering Jaspal Bhatti, the genial, sharp-witted satirist
28 Mar, 2025
Jaspal Bhatti in Flop Show (1989).
Plus: The director of the hit Netflix show Adolescence speaks to Scroll. Here are this week's top stories from The Reel.
What would Jaspal Bhatti do? The ace satirist from Chandigarh, who memorably made us laugh and think about corruption and other social problems, died on 2012. His wife Savita Bhatt, who starred in his popular TV shows, starting with Flop Show, revisits his vision and legacy. What he told me was, you will always be Mrs Jaspal Bhatti, but I want you to be Savita,” Savita Bhatti told Scroll. “He made it a point to get me to understand what it was that he was doing.”
The Netflix show Adolescence is all the rage, whether for its exploration of teenage social media culture or its daring one-taking filming style. In an interview, director Philip Baratini looks at the staggering response to the show and its impact on the manosphere debate.
For readers who missed it, here is Scroll’s review of Adolescence, “a devastating piece of writing – a document of the here and now as well as a commentary on alienation ricocheting through the generations”.
Gujarati writer Rajnikumar Pandya (1938-2025) was an exceptional short-story writer, an accomplished novelist and a master of compact and elaborated evocative profiles, Urvisk Kothari writes. Pandya was also enamoured with and an avid chronicler of the golden era of Hindi film music.
Write a comment ...